False benevolence of climate justice — billions for COP, crumbs for communities

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The climate justice industry continues to replicate historic inequalities by excluding surrounding communities from decision-making authority and economic ...

The climate justice industry continues to replicate historic inequalities by excluding surrounding communities from decision-making authority and economic benefits.

Christopher Rutledge is executive director of the Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) and Women Affected by Mining United in Action (Wamua) Advice Office.

As the world’s climate justice industry gathers in Antalya, Türkiye, for yet another COP conference, the poor of Theunissen, in South Africa’s Free State, remain exactly where the global development establishment has always found them: on the margins of prosperity, excluded from decisions about their future and available to be consulted whenever another institution needs to demonstrate its commitment to justice.

There is something profoundly perverse about an international system capable of mobilising billions to address the suffering of marginalised communities, while remaining apparently incapable of ensuring that those same people exercise meaningful power over developments taking place on their doorstep.

Across the world, government delegations, international and local NGOs, consultants, researchers and corporate representatives assemble to negotiate humanity’s climate future. They speak earnestly about inclusion, participation and leaving nobody behind. They produce declarations, frameworks and funding commitments, congratulating one another on the progress achieved.

Meanwhile, in places such as Theunissen, the transition to renewable energy is taking place amid persistent poverty and exclusion, with communities struggling to secure meaningful influence over the development supposedly intended to deliver a more just future.

This contradiction exposes what Mining Affected Communities United in Action (Macua) calls the false benevolence economy: an elaborate and increasingly lucrative system in which managing poverty and exclusion has become more institutionally rewarding than eliminating them.

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